Title: Rollercoaster, Favourite Ride

Author: ZombieJazz

Fandom: Law & Order: SVU

Disclaimer: I don't own them. Law and Order SVU and its characters belong to Dick Wolf. The characters of Will (and his family) and Noah have been created and developed for the sake of this AU series.

Summary: Elliot has left SVU - and it hits Olivia hard. His departure has some implications for her work life and her personal life. She tries to figure out what it means for her own identity, her new marriage, and her work situation. In the midst of it all, she's also having to navigate new squad members at work and still deal with being the mother of a sick child. This story takes place just several months after the conclusion of Undeserved in my AU series of stories.

Author's Notes: This AU series is for SVU fans and readers who want Olivia to have something that resembles a more normal life outside of work and a family of her own - hopefully somewhat realistically within the canon of SVU. My stories are not EO and never will be. You may want to read some of my other ones for context on the characters in this AU first - though, it's likely fairly self-explanatory on its own too.

WARNING: THIS STORY MIGHT KIND OF BE A SPOILER FOR READERS OF UNDESERVED.

She could feel herself being looked at and turned around to find Amaro standing behind her stirring his cup of coffee and seemingly staring at her.

"Do you need something?" She said with more than a little annoyance in her voice.

He startled a bit and made eye contact. "Ah, sorry," he sputtered a bit. "I was …", he gestured towards her desk, "…looking at your photo, I guess. Sorry."

She glanced back at her desk to follow his point at where his eyes actually were set. It was her latest framed photo of Noah. Since Elliot had left and the new faces had come into the squad room, she'd cleared her desk of most of her personal items, wanting to maintain her privacy. But she hadn't been able to remove the picture of her smiling son. Sometimes taking a few minutes to look at him and to see his ability to still smile and laugh after everything he'd had to endure – it was what she needed to force herself to get through the day. Still, with Nick's eyes now set on the photo frame, she was regretting her decision to leave it out.

"Is that your son?" Amaro asked, clearly trying to make amends for his stares.

She looked up and away from Noah again, she saw that Rollins was now listening in too, as she turned her eyes back to the young detective. She just gave him a small nod and no verbal response.

"I've got a daughter," he offered. "She's four. Well, she's almost five. I brought in a picture of her too but then I wasn't sure if it was a good idea to have a photo of her out … you know … here …"

She examined him for a moment. "It's a personal choice," she allowed after several seconds and after seriously considering ignoring his attempt at conversation. "You aren't likely to have many perps at your desk ever, if that's what you're worried about." She paused and looked back at her son. "Some times on this job it helps to have reminders around about why you're here."

Nick apparently took her verbally responding to him as an invitation to come closer to her desk and examine the picture from that angle.

"How old is he?" He asked. "Like five too?"

She knew Noah was small. The chemo had stunted his growth and he really hadn't gained much height or weight since he'd started treatment. He'd had some fluctuations in his weight going up and down but overall, he was underweight for a child his age – and his height was significantly overwhelming. But the doctors said they wouldn't be doing much about that until he was out of LTM – then they might give him some growth hormones if he didn't start to spurt on his own after a year or so.

She rubbed his eyebrow, though. She should've just avoided commenting but she was in the midst of it now and she couldn't cut it off without being really rude. Cragen had already talked to her about that – more like told her off. She needed to get her attitude in check and at least try. They didn't need to know her life story but she could at least be a little congenial.

"He's seven," she allowed.

She saw Nick look harder at the picture and was just waiting for him to ask if it was an old photo. She didn't want to have to say that it was a photo from barely a month ago – one that she'd just randomly taken while Noah was galloping around the playground, but one she'd been so taken with that she'd had it printed out and switched it into her work frame.

The way the light had hit Noah's face, he just seemed to be glowing and happy. You wouldn't know it was a stop at the Ancient Playground – one of Noah's favourites – outside the Met while they were on their way up to Mt. Sinai for him to get another one of his lumbar punctures. In that moment her son was a normal little boy full of giggles and sillies, clambering up the sides of one of the pyramid structures and smiling at her in his sense of accomplishment. No more than an hour after it, she was having to calm her son and wipe away his tears before going in for the procedure – one of his least favourite, if any could be called favourite. But there was something about this one that always just set Noah off in cries of fear before they were called in.

She didn't blame him – even thinking about them having to stick the little needle in between his vertebrate made her cringe. Having to help the nurses get Noah into position for it and hold him tight and secure while they cleansed his back and threaded in the fine puncture – it was hard for her. She couldn't watch them do it and had to force herself to keep her eyes on Noah's face and talk softly to him, telling him how brave he was and how still he needed to stay.

It didn't matter how they assured her it wasn't painful – it was just uncomfortable and a short pinch. It sounded awful and the way Noah cried, she knew it was a big deal to him and he always had an aching back the next day. But at least she could curl into the hospital bed with him for the few hours after the procedure that he needed to be monitored and hold him and calm him – her little boy. She'd wipe at his tears and give him kisses and read to him until he'd always cry himself to sleep and she could just lay there and listen to his breathing and pray that all this would be over soon. That Will's family's faith counted for something, that there really was a God and that son her little boy would just be well and she could get on with giving him a normal life – or something like it.

But instead of commenting on her son's age, Amaro had said, "He seems familiar for some reason."

She offered no comment. She wasn't sure why her son would look familiar to him. But she saw the detective looking at her and gears processing. Then she knew that he somehow knew – and hated having the picture of her boy out even more.

Her family had benefited from some of the funding set up through the Detectives Endowment Fund. The money they'd received had helped cover the costs of some of Noah's treatment – paying down some of the bills that weren't covered by the Force's health benefits. Though she had initially felt awkward accepting the funding – as the bills stacked up and her and Will fell deeper and deeper into a financial hole, she had come up with fewer excuses to decline it.

She figured she'd paid the $1.30 a payday into the fund off her detective's salary for years and hadn't ever expected to need to access it. She supposed most people did – but that didn't mean she should feel guilty about actually accessing it. She'd given a donation to the endowment's Christmas campaign each year for police families too. It had taken some convincing from Will – and Elliot and the Captain - but she decided to put in the forms to access some of the monies available through the endowment and she was grateful for every cent her son had received to help their family offset the costs of getting him back to health. She was thankful to have Brothers in Blue who were willing to invest money from their hard-earned pay cheques to help out their extended professional family.

So her family had also been invited to some of the endowment functions – usually the Christmas party. It was annually held just after the Thanksgiving weekend to give the families that received the money a chance to say thank you but also as a staging event for the annual campaign to get members of the force to support their own. The previous Christmas, the three of them had ended up in a crowded group photo of that year's endowment families that had been taken at the event and ended up in the internal newsletter that had been sent out to promote the Christmas donation campaign. She wouldn't have expected anyone to have much noticed her son in the photo or even be able to remember it and pick him out later – but that was the only thing she could think of that would have Nick recognizing her son. And now he was looking at her with that sympathetic gaze of parental recognition and horror at her experience. It was a look that she despised.

It wasn't a secret that her son was ill. But it also wasn't the beginning of their journey anymore, when she knew her family situation had been added to the water-cooler and transit-talk gossip or general commentary. Even though they were still working their way through Noah's treatment – most of the Force had forgotten about it. Fin, John and the Captain, of course, still asked how he was doing. Cragen still accommodated her needs to be away from the desk to care for him – he had to but he really was more than accommodating. But the reality was that Noah's illness wasn't as in the face anymore. Her schedule was generally more predictable – so work could just kind of forget about it, expect for those who knew why she seemed to miss three days every month and why every Thursday she started late. For everyone but her and Will and Noah – it just wasn't a big deal anymore. They didn't fully appreciate that their cancer journey was still continuing – that Noah's treatment was still very really and there were some days that were just as challenging as ever. But the changing faces in the squad room had meant she'd been able to try to make her private life her private life again. She thought she'd been doing an OK job at that and wanted to keep it that way. She glanced at Nick and gave him a firm glare – challenging him to push further into her business and making clear that she'd lash back if he did.

But he just gave her a thin smile and went back to his place and sat down. He opened the top drawer of his desk and fished out a framed picture. He handed it across the gap to her.

"Zara," he said, nodding at it.

She took it and looked at it for a moment. It was a smiling dark haired little girl, dressed in pink and with big dark eyes. She gave him a smile. "She's beautiful," she allowed and handed it back to him.

He gave her a little smile and looked at his daughter again for a second, before handing the photo to Rollins, who was still clearly listening in on their chit-chat.

"She takes after her mom," he said. "Your boy looks like he takes after his mom too."

Nick had already made known that he wasn't shy to offer flattery and sweet-talk to the ladies. So she didn't take his comment as much of anything – if she had, she likely would've snapped at him to send him shuffling back to his place. Instead, she just gazed at Noah's happy eyes in the picture on her desk again. Moments in time and looks can be deceiving. The photo sometimes reminded her of that. Only she knew when the photo had been taken and what her and her son had shared in the hours after. But for that half-hour of play – they'd gotten to be mom and son at the park. She tried to give him as many of those moments as possible.

"What's your kid's name, detective?" Rollins asked her as she handed Nick his photo back and he carefully put it back into his drawer, watching his daughter as he slowly rolled it shut.

She glanced up at Rollins. "Noah," she nodded.

"Geez guys, doing this job with little kids at home," Rollins drawled out and shook her head.

Olivia shrugged and glanced at Amaro. "I won't tell you that it gets easier."